Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions his Department has had with representatives from Wirral Council on the provision of additional funding during the covid-19 outbreak.

We announced on 18 April an additional £1.6 billion of funding to support councils delivering essential frontline services, taking the total to over £3.2 billion of additional funding. To date, Wirral Council has received £20.8 million of additional funding to support their response to Covid-19. Last month (April), Wirral Council also received an upfront payment of 3 months of social care grants, totalling £2.8 million.

We have continued to engage with local authorities across the sector to develop our understanding of how the additional funding is being used by local authorities, using both monthly data collections and ongoing conversations with councils to refine our assessment. The Department issued a monitoring return to all local authorities, including Wirral Council, on 7 April, and we will issue a second monitoring return later this month. This has been supported by engagement with Local Resilience Forums, councils and their representatives, including our local Delivery Board with Councillors from across the country.